I find it admirable that you care more about others that you will never meet half-a-world away, but I feel differently. I'd rahter have my money (as would the majority of first-world residents).
Honestly, I do find it admirable, I'm not being sarcastic. It's kind of like the vegetarians who refuse to eat meat because they don't want animals killed.
But we're getting off topic. Good luck to you, Lewis.
I do hope to go to Laos some day. And I have lived in a poor neighborhood in India for months, which of course influences my position.
(And I am a vegetarian who refuses to eat meat because I don't want animals raised in captivity all their lives before getting killed. I got no problem with the killing of animals itself - that's an inevitable fact of life.)